


Escape Plan (Spoons vs. Rhetoric)

by strawberriesandtophats



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: M/M, Pining, Prison Escape, Spoons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-12-01 00:40:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11474976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberriesandtophats/pseuds/strawberriesandtophats
Summary: For the prompt:please write a fic where Treville, Richelieu and other guys (musketeers probably) are taken hostage. so while these idiots are thinking up some stupid half-arsed plan, Richelieu starts negotiations. He’s ruthless, cold, calculating and effective. So he’s doing the negotiations and Treville both dying of fear “for god’s sake, shut up, they are going to kill you because of that big mouth of yours” and admitting that Richelieu is doing the right thing.Basically I want Richelieu being a badass hostage without having to lift a finger.





	Escape Plan (Spoons vs. Rhetoric)

There was absolutely no way out of the cell. The bars were sturdy and new, not brittle things that could be tampered with at the right angle. They were stuck.

Treville sighed as Athos and Aramis just kept talking, each step in their separate plans requiring more and more luck and speed. None of the plans his men had thought of in the past three hours had been well-thought out and some of them made no sense. At least one had just been about finding a decent spoon so they could dig themselves out.

Treville had pointed out that even if that worked, there was a significant drop into the freezing sea around the cliff on which this little but highly effective prison was built.

Richelieu hadn’t jointed in when they’d started talking about planning their escape. He hadn’t spoken much at all, only watched the guards come and go, humming some hymn underneath his breath. There was something deeply unsettling about his stillness, more than anything else. Treville could feel his men’s eyes on him whenever Richelieu made the slightest movement, as if they believed being locked inside a cell with a man like Richelieu was a punishment in itself.

At one point his long, delicate fingers had traced the bars, rings gleaming in the faint light from the window. He didn’t have hands worn and calloused from years of fighting. Instead his fingers had smooth callouses from holding countless quills . He hadn’t had to rely on his fists to survive, like they had.

Richelieu continued humming until one of the guards faltered, eyes darting towards the long red robes and the silver hair. The look on the guard’s face changed from open curiosity to  pure pants-wetting terror in a split second when he looked at Richelieu’s face.

Treville didn’t want to know what the guard had seen in Richelieu’s expression.

“Let’s have a talk, young man,” Richelieu said smoothly. “How long has it been since your last confession?”

“What?” D’Artagnan muttered. “What does he think he’s doing, playing the priest-card?”

“Does the Cardinal have spies  _everywhere_?” Athos whispered to Treville, who put a finger to his lips. The young guard had already dragged a battered wooden stool in front of the cell and lowered his head. Perhaps he was reacting the almost serene look on Richelieu’s face, or he just really needed someone to listen to him. The confession was a long series of mutterings ranging from being the person who took the last bite of cheese to thinking about the possibility of seducing the baker’s daughter back home.

“It is not right, is it, imprisoning a man of God?” the young guard said, fidgeting. He was looking at Richelieu’s fine cloak, already muddy and covered in foul hay. “Not to mention a Cardinal.”

The small smile on Richelieu’s face made Treville’s heart drop. It was the smile he would only allow to show just before he began one of his speeches that changed the fates of thousands and made it clear that Richelieu would not just be a footnote in history. It was the smile of the second most powerful man in France when he was feeling in his element.

A wiser person than this guard would have realized that he was out of his depth.

Richelieu was well known as the king’s chief adviser, after all. 

The fact that Richelieu was in front of him seemed to cause the guard fall into an existential and religious crisis.

“I believe we could make a suitable arrangement that would suit us both,” Richelieu said, his voice soft and persuasive.

“A deal with the devil,” Aramis breathed out. Treville glared at him.

“I can’t let you out,” the guard said, immediately.

 “Would the punishment from your superior be anything at all in comparison to what how his majesty would do to you if he found out that you were keeping us in here?” Richelieu asked.

“Imprisoning a priest doesn’t make God happy either,” Aramis added.

Soon the guard was shaking. Richelieu’s voice became low and coaxing, not the voice of a man who was trying to get a cat to come out from underneath the bed, but the voice of a terrifying creature who could cause entire armies to reconsider their life choices.

Treville looked all around the hallway, waiting for senior guards to show up and take over. He wished that Richelieu would stop talking. There was no use wasting breath on such a lowly guard, and a new one at that. 

Then he heard the unmistakable rattle of keys. The guard had sneaked into the quartermaster’s lodge and found the only back-up key in the entire prison. His hands shook and his head was bowed as he opened the door.

“It’ll only buy you a few seconds at the most,” the guard said. “They are on their break. You must run.”

He nodded at Richelieu, who smiled in return. 

“Make it look like you broke out,” Treville said, and Porthos immediately knocked out the young guard and shoved him into a corner. Treville grabbed Richelieu’s arm and dragged him so that he’d move faster.

They had no time to lose.

Red robes swept the floor, and for a moment Treville wondered what kind of a life they’d led if Richelieu had been allowed to continue a life as a soldier. Treville watched as Richelieu’s eyes swept the hallway, searching for secret panels or something of the sort if Treville knew him right. His eyes gleamed, all brilliance and formidable intellect as he inclined his head at Treville, as if they had some shared secret. Which they did, of course.

Damn that man.

Richelieu had no right to look magnificent in the middle of an escape from a prison. No right at all.

They ran. Porthos and Aramis in the front and D’artagnan and Athos in the back, making sure that they could get out of this alive. 

Musketeer uniforms solved a lot of problems when it came to making people hurry to find horses for six people. A commanding voice was also good to have, especially if the person using that voice was visibly being obeyed by four Musketeers.

But the red robes of the Cardinal were another matter. People almost tripped over their own feet in their haste.

Richelieu didn’t stop smiling all they way back to Paris.

It was damn unfair.


End file.
